Aslaug's Axe Shed

Friday, I had an unpleasant experience. One I would like to share with people here, simply because I need to grumble and grouch about it some.

As you all know, I spent over a year at a museum in a city called Randers, starting in mid-2008, and ending in late 2009. The first twelve months I spent there were supported, meaning that half of my wages were paid by the state, and the other half were paid by the municipality of Randers (since the museum was a public institution, and they pay the wages). After I finished the supported period, I spent three months on a photo-op project and then I was back in the queue of people looking for a job.

Until the first of February, when I started a new supported job, this time in a city called Hj?rring, located in Vendsyssel, in the northernmost part of Denmark. Look at a map of Denmark, and you will find Hj?rring in the “hat” on top of the “head” of Jutland. Anyway, I am happy as a pig in mud there. It’s a fantastic workplace. People are very friendly, and I have far more responsibility than ever before, and obviously, I try to live up to this responsibility by doing good work.

I have a small book to write, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the firefighter’s club in Hj?rring … dry stuff some might say, but seeing as the city has literally been wiped off the face of the map on several occasions due to fires, it’s turned out to be a truly interesting topic. And I’ve also got to plan an exhibition … my -first- exhibition … for next year, also on the topic of Hj?rring’s firebrigade. I’m so thrilled I can’t even describe it! I’m just there on a supported job and they are willing to give me -that- much responsibility? Hell yeah, you can bet your backsides I’ll do my damnedest to prove worthy of it. Oh, and I’ve also translated manymanymanymany pages of Danish museum texts into English, since it seems no one else there feels comfortable with the language. Not a bad little skill to have, in view of future job prospects then!

But here’s the thing: the museum in Hj?rring, called “Vendsyssel Historical Museum”, is just as stretched for cash as every other Danish museum. They need two or three more people working for them full time, but there just isn’t enough money to hire them. To give you an example: My boss, Signe … very lovely lady, very nice and helpful … is going on maternity leave this upcoming Friday and she no doubt needs the break! She’s literally doing the work of two people, since she is in charge of modern times (post-reformation) and she’s also in charge of all the museum’s communication and promotion-work. So she covers a historical period of some four and three quarter centuries, and every single exhibition the museum is in charge of … both in Hj?rring and in its -five- associated, smaller museums around the area.

One person.

It’s just outrageous. So in short, money is in short supply. It sucks but there goes. However, this means that this museum, like all others, have learned to adapt. It’s either that or go under after all. What they do is they assign various projects to people hired on temporary contracts, or to people on supported jobs. This also means that naturally, when they can get an employee for a whole year, but effectively only have to pay half wages because the other half is paid for from Copenhagen, this is a great help to them. Therefore, if they get someone like me, on a supported job-contract, they naturally want to squeeze every day out of me that they can. Meaning I can’t expect them to turn up after two months saying “Look, we think you’re doing such a fantastic job, wouldn’t you like to get a REAL job, working for us full time?”

There just isn’t enough money to do something like that.

So when on Friday, I got an E-mail from my unemployment agency case-worker, asking me bluntly: “Do you apply for both listed and unlisted jobs and when do you expect to find ordinary employment?” (exact translation), I nearly blew a fuse!!

Look, much as I would LOVE to, I CAN’T BLOODY PREDICT THE FUTURE!!

So when I “expect” to have a job is open to the vagaries of f*cking fate! Which is -roughly- what I replied to them …

I also pointed out that I am fed up, sick to my back teeth and pissed off beyond all recognition at being hounded into taking a job like that of Charlie Chaplin in “modern times”, at a conveyor belt, holding a monkeywrench in one hand and an hourglass in the other, watching my life slip away second by second doing a job I don’t want to do, and which has NOTHING to do with my education.

I realize they have to try to get me into a job, but the way I see it, my qualifications for jobs in my actual line of work are increasing drastically if I would just be allowed to finish my work at the museum in good order. For goodnes sake, I’ve been there a month and a half and they are asking me, basically, if I can expect them to hire me full time within the foreseeable future??

That’s NOT how it works.

And here’s the real pincher. I have tried explaining this to them on no less than seven different occasions. These are the people who are supposed to be trained for this kind of thing. These are people who are supposed to KNOW how the job-market works … but clearly, CLEARLY they don’t.

It is not simply something I am saying either. Both the museum in Randers AND the museum in Hj?rring, plus a third one where I was at a job interview last year, say that what I am doing right now is the way to get a job. Do my supported job-period and then use that to show them that I am someone they can’t -afford- to let go. Or at least someone they need to find some money in order to hire for projects as often as possible. I have told my case-worker this time and time and time ai-friggin’-gen! And neither she, nor the one I had before her, nor the one at my unemployment agency, believe me. They simply do not -believe- me. They seem to think I am trying to shirk my responsibilities, and that I’m taking the easy way out.

So I called the personel manager at the museum friday around noon and asked her, if it would be okay to address similar future attempts at harrassing me towards her so SHE could explain it to them.

Fortunately, she not only said yes, but she said she could definitely understand why I was fed up with this. And that she frankly found it insulting on my behalf.

So from now on, I will respond to any such nonsensical queries with “Please talk to the personel manager at the museum”.

Grrrr …

Rant over.